The air changed before the Hollow noticed.
A low pressure crept into the village like a tide pulling inward. The birds stopped singing. Even the wind, once familiar as breath, seemed to coil into silence. Not a breeze stirred the flame towers. Not a leaf twitched in the trees.
Chizzy woke to the stillness with a start, her skin damp and her heartbeat racing. Her dreams had been strange—fragmented memories playing backward, faces she knew speaking words she'd never heard.
She sat up and looked around. Even the Ember Stone, always glowing faintly through the night, was dimmer. Flickering.
A knock at her door startled her.
It was Sera. Pale. Tense. Her bow slung across her back.
"You feel it too," she said without preamble.
Chizzy nodded. "Something's wrong."
They moved quickly through the village. A dog barked once in the distance, then whimpered and vanished into the brush. Talia met them near the northern path, face drawn with worry.
"The flame towers... three of them went out in the last hour. No wind. No sabotage. They just... died."
Chizzy closed her eyes, feeling the hum beneath her feet. "It's here."
Aerun joined them with a grim nod. "The Sealing worked. Malrec can't control minds anymore. So he's sending something to break them instead."
They all knew what it meant.
The Beast of Forgotten Names.
A legend that even Keepers had buried deep. Not a monster of claws or flame—but a living wound. It fed on memories, swallowed identity, and left only emptiness.
Chizzy turned to her people, now gathering at the Ember Circle, anxious and alert.
"We need watchers posted on every gate. Light every backup flame tower. Get the flamebells ready," she ordered.
Sera leaned in. "Do we know what it looks like?"
"No," Chizzy said. "That's the trick. It might not look like anything. It might feel like a memory you forgot to remember. It might sound like your mother's voice. Or smell like the rain you smelled on the day your brother vanished."
Talia swallowed hard. "Then how do we fight it?"
Chizzy stared into the coals. "We remember louder."
That night, they began inscribing sigils not just on the walls—but on their own skin. Runes of recall, lines of ancestry, truths engraved in ink and ash.
In the western woods, a young boy named Dren was the first to see it.
He was walking back from flamewatch when the trees whispered—not in words, but names. Names he didn't know but somehow did. He stopped walking.
A shadow stood among the trees. Not large. Not grotesque. Just… there. A silhouette missing light.
The air around it bent, like heat over stone.
"Who are you?" Dren whispered.
The shape said nothing, but Dren's knees buckled. In his mind, flashes—his first steps, his sister's laughter, the lullaby his mother once hummed—all slipped like sand through his fingers.
He screamed.
The flamebell clanged seconds later, its toll shrill and frantic.
Chizzy ran toward it with Talia and Aerun close behind.
They found Dren curled in a ball, eyes wide and glassy, mouth moving without sound.
Chizzy knelt. "Dren. Look at me. Remember who you are. Say your name."
The boy blinked. "I… I'm…"
But the word wouldn't come.
Chizzy gritted her teeth. "He's here. The Beast is here."
Sera raised her bow, scanning the dark. "Where?"
Chizzy stood slowly, staring into the woods.
"Everywhere the silence touches."
And far off, the shadows shifted.
The Beast had entered the Hollow.
Not to kill.
But to erase.